Castleford secured their place in the play‑offs with a thumping win over a lacklustre Harlequins team. It is a remarkable achievement for a side who 12 months ago were bottom of Super League and would have been relegated had the franchise system not been brought in.

The Tigers' coach, Terry Matterson, admitted that he might have lost his job if they had gone down. "Maybe the reaction would have been that I wouldn't have been here," he said. "In past history that's what's happened. If they had got relegated again I just don't know what would have happened. It has hurt the club financially, being relegated twice."

Instead, Castleford were able to give their younger players more game time and towards the end of last season they won games which, Matterson says, gave them momentum going into this campaign. The young guns have blossomed, none more so than the loose forward Joe Westerman, who scored and converted two first-half tries for a 12-0 lead after a pretty tough 40 minutes.

That gave the Tigers the base from which to take the game to Quins after the interval and by the time Westerman had completed his hat-trick, 11 minutes into the second half, the game was effectively over. Castleford were 28 points ahead and they began to have some fun, with the half-backs, Rangi Chase and Brent Sherwin, cutting loose on the back of some hard work by Kirk Netherton.

The home side looked a shadow of the team who hammered Hull Kingston Rovers 40-10 at Craven Park in mid-June to go fourth. The thought that they would not even make the play-offs come the end of the season would have been laughable, but since then they have won only one match. Quins have slumped to 11th and although it is still mathematically possible for them to finish in the top eight with one fixture remaining, it is hard to see them doing anything should they make the play-offs.

Their coach, Brian McDermott, is at a loss to explain their fall from grace. "It isn't injuries or suspensions," he said. "We've got a group of people who work really hard and care about rugby league in London, care about the team and each other. We spent all pre-season establishing that and putting these boys through a real tough pre-season. I haven't got a group of blokes who don't care. We go through a certain process in training, the skills and conditioning, we've over-analysed, we've under-analysed, we've had days off, we've made them work. At the moment we're in free fall and it's hard to put a finger on it."

However, McDermott is adamant he will not throw in the towel and that he will turn things around. But it looks like he will have to wait until next season to do so.